


Three Things About Carson Beckett

by MistressKat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-16
Updated: 2010-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressKat/pseuds/MistressKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title says it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Things About Carson Beckett

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cinaed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/gifts).



> Written as an answer to the _"Name a character and I'll tell you three (or more) facts about them, from my own personal pseudo-canon"_ meme on LJ.

**1.** When Carson was fifteen, his mum taught him to drive; first the farm tractor, then her rusty Morris Oxford that survived from one MOT to the next with nothing but sheer personality and his mum’s oatmeal biscuits that every mechanic in three village radius was prepared to sell their soul for. Carson, it turned out, was an excellent driver; manoeuvring the car along the winding back roads with speed and competence that he’s convinced were the sole reason for May Donnell letting him fumble his way into her white cotton panties on their second date.

Carson really misses it – not May’s breathy little moans and wet tightness, though he does occasionally think fondly of those too – but the growl of engine underneath him, the feeling of being in control. With Puddlejumpers it’s something he has to fight for; the ancient technology reluctant to yield power, and that more than any real lack of skill or daring is why Carson finds flying them so difficult. Because, despite the careful impression he cultivates, he is just not that good at sharing.

 

***

 

**2.** There’s a cliché about how physicians are supposed to remember the names and faces of all the people who die under their care. Carson used to, long time ago, when he was a young doctor doing his first residency in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Mrs. Melech was the first; a car accident victim with uncontrollable internal bleeding, too far gone for even modern medicine. Then there was Dominic (six, football fan, final stage leukaemia), Krishnan Utti (dark eyes sunken deep, heavy metal poisoning), Annie Larson (great grandmother, old age). But after a while there were just too many of them, the details fading and mixing together until Carson couldn’t remember Dominic’s favourite team or the exact number of grieving family members around Annie’s bed as the life support was switched off. It’s something he used to feel guilty about, but that too faded with time. 

Now Carson only remembers those he saves. Theirs are the names he hears shouted in the corridors, the faces he sees over lunch and in meetings, the hands he clasps in greetings and goodbyes. They won’t let him forget; the proof of life and worth existing in these small moments, in the slide of skin against skin and the steady heartbeat of the city.  

 

***

 

**3.** Carson believes in the existence of… well. Not _God_, not exactly, more like some abstract concept of a higher power. Despite everything he’s seen, he still thinks good and evil are more than just empty words, and that people will get what’s coming to them, if not in this life then in the next. None of it stops him doing what he must. He crosses the line knowingly, but not easily; resigned to the price but determined not to pay it alone.


End file.
